The Power of Acquia Convert: A Q&A With the Experts

In August, Jon Meck, Bounteous x Accolite’s SVP of Marketing, led a discussion with Jennifer Griffin Smith, Chief Market Officer at Acquia, and Poonam Patil, Director of CRO at Bounteous x Accolite, about Acquia Convert, a new personalization tool in Acquia’s DXP offerings.

Griffin Smith and Patil brought their expertise as users of Acquia Convert to the table, providing insight into how clients can leverage the tool and build upon their existing personalization and experimentation strategy.

The full webinar, “Acquia Convert, A Journey to Experimentation,” can be found here. The following is a condensed Q&A of the discussion.

Jon Meck: As a marketer, can you talk a bit about what kinds of challenges teams are facing right now and how Acquia fits into all of this?

Jennifer Griffin Smith: It’s the day-to-day we live in as marketers, dealing with the current challenges that we have, where we’re expected to do more with either the same or less. We’re competing in a busy digital landscape, which means we’re trying to get more for the dollars that we’re spending. We’re trying to attract and convert more audiences when we all know that site traffic is declining and SEM is expensive, and we’re all being pressured for higher ROIs. It is a challenging time to be a marketer.

I get the privilege to work with companies like yours and for Acquia that provide solutions to marketers like myself. It’s wonderful that me and my team can use our own solutions. We get to test these and be what we call “customer zero.”

We have a new product, Acquia Convert, that offers a no-code solution that empowers marketers to create, manage, and deploy testing and personalization campaigns instantly and on any website. It enhances user engagement, builds brand loyalty, and boosts revenue while helping to provide rapid ROI.

This platform is AI-driven with great recommendations, machine learning, and comprehensive analytics, ensuring that we as marketers can focus on optimal strategies to make informed decisions based on robust data and not just guesswork. It enables us to be more efficient, and marketing teams can more easily create A/B tests and personalized experiences. We’re doing this ourselves regardless of underlying web technology, and it eliminates that need for IT involvement.

Meck: A lot of companies might already have some tools in-house that are doing similar things, but aren’t always able to utilize those effectively. Have you seen that as well?

Smith: We do see that and I think that is the explosion of MarTech and all the tens of thousands of suppliers that are out there for us. We find that many of our customers have multiple tools, but they don’t necessarily have the expertise in-house to really understand what’s needed and how they can test and can upend that data that’s being collected. Acquia Convert offers a number of different features that help mitigate some of those challenges.

I’ll give you the top three of those:

The first is called plan idea functionality, which uses AI to scan pages and create testing recommendations. It provides a hypothesis, actionable testing suggestions, and what kind of theory the recommendations are based on. It’s done in such a way that you don’t need IT involvement, so it’s easier for teams to use the insights heat map.

The second thing I’ll talk about is the screen recording feature, which makes it easy to identify problem areas where you can see results of different campaigns based on heat maps.

The third is testing and personalization using some generative AI features to help create content variations that can be tested and personalized to audiences, which hopefully drives up conversion in a way that is easy for a marketer to use, as opposed to needing any additional kind of technical involvement.

Meck: What’s the number one priority that you’re trying to solve and how are you using Acquia Convert to do that?

Smith: Our number one priority is higher ROI. How do I increase conversions, use my digital marketing spend proactively, and get a higher ROI? I need to show those improvements in KPIs to my board, but I also want my team to feel good about the work they’re doing and seeing the impact of their campaigns and their work on our company performance, our customer satisfaction, and what our customers can do.

I’m going to give you four examples where we have had challenges and how we’ve used Acquia Convert to address them.

The first is low conversion rates. We all find that despite attracting traffic, sometimes websites struggle to convert visitors into whatever your conversion method is - whether it’s a customer or a prospect - and that leads to missed opportunities. There are a few things to think about and how we can help. From an A/B testing perspective, we’re using traffic distribution tests to prioritize testing to drive visitors directly to a specific form, such as a requested demo, which we find more productive than them going on their own journey. We can provide the same level of experience, but we’re driving them to a specific form that we know converts higher. We’ve enabled session recording and heat map tracking so we can record user sessions. We can watch those interactions and use those heat maps to identify where users are clicking and we can uncover pages that might have low conversion rates or low engagements. We’re also offering personalized experiences based on the data that we get, such as location behavior - if someone is located somewhere, we might have an event that would be more relevant to them than others, so we can present more relevant information, and that’s really helping drive conversions.

The second is high bounce rate. I think a lot of us see that users sometimes leave sites too quickly, which can indicate that content or experiences aren’t being met. The content isn’t what they’re looking for and the experience isn’t meeting their needs. You can try split testing different versions of your home page or landing pages to determine what elements are keeping those users engaged longer. You can analyze on-page surveys to directly ask users for reasons why they’re leaving. You can create dynamic content and personalized calls to action that resonate more with them, all trying to decrease bounce rates. We’ve created this list of personalizations to target visitors from key properties for us, like drupal.org, so if people are coming from there, we can tailor relevant content to them to help reduce those bounce rates and it doesn’t impact our broader SEO strategy. We’ve also integrated Acquia Convert with key systems like GA4 and Sixth Sense, allowing us to align metrics with marketing efforts in a more streamlined fashion. Using Sixth Sense, we’re able to target different buying stages or companies and provide them with personalized content based on where they are in the buying stage. We also have an always-on video channel called Acquia TV, and we’re using Acquia Convert to allow us to personalize the home pages of that always-on video channel depending on subscriber information and user engagement, which is giving a more personalized content journey.

The next is clear customer journey mapping. The path of a visitor from just being a visitor to whatever your conversion measurement is, or customer/prospect engagement. You can use behavior-based testing to experiment with different user flows and content placement to smooth out that customer journey. You can employ funnel analysis to visualize where users are dropping off and use that data to refine the next steps of the customer journey.

Finally, content relevance. What if the content on your site doesn’t seem to be resonating with your audiences, resulting in low engagement and poor performance? We use Acquia Convert to experiment with different headlines, images, and body copy to discover what content variations are performing best. We’re using this on some pages and feedback mechanisms, like surveys on specific pages, and then leveraging that data dynamically to be able to look at the next step. We’ve implemented key event tracking on some of our major lead forms to help us gain insight into how those users are converting on our most important pages.

These are just four examples, but there are many more examples of how we can bring value. It’s with that focus on increasing engagement, reducing bounce rates, improving conversions, and trying to get maximum exposure on our spend and improving ROI.

Meck: How can an organization get going quickly with Acquia Convert?

Smith: Come and talk to us! We get really excited when we talk about how we’re using our own products and how we can help other marketing teams get there.

Meck: Can you share some examples of where we’ve seen our clients leaning into these capabilities?

Poonam Patil: Bounteous x Accolite engages within a few verticals with Acquia Convert. One of those verticals is hospitality. For this specific client, we focused on two areas: the marketing landing pages that are driven by their robust email campaigns and the e-commerce funnel that was addressed earlier. These two areas drive the conversion that this client sees and needs to optimize.

We’re testing different key elements on the marketing landing pages around certain themes, such as urgency messaging and whole page layouts, both of which drive positive results and provide key insights, helping us learn more about our customer base. Many times, we forget that in an experimentation program, its main purpose is to drive that positive impact in value. When we do have use cases where we don’t see the positive results we were expecting, they’re still informing us of the customer’s behavior, what it means, and how we can improve those experiences.

We’ve also used many features within ARPIC and Word where one of the key features is the survey tool that was addressed earlier—it’s very effective in the e-commerce funnel. In this example, we were able to deploy a survey and learn a lot about drop-off rates. We collected data on pricing and travel dates, and what users might be seeing as a friction point in looking at travel dates. We used these critical insights to drive experimentation use cases, adding to the roadmap that drives positive conversion and impact.

We’re also in the midst of 2025 planning for this client, where we’re going to focus on personalization for key strategic segments that will be delivered by their CDP. We’ve built robust personalization use cases that will help not only mature their experimentation program, but create a bigger impact for business while enhancing the overall user experience.

The other client is in the service industry, where our focus is on online lead generation, keeping in mind that we want the customer to stay online and complete their end-to-end journey without having to call the call center, which we all know costs more.

Here we’re focused on testing the lead form and the CTA buttons on the website that lead to the lead form. We’re looking at various segments to help deliver personalized customer experiences. We’re conducting geo targeting experimentation, along with focusing on the mobile-specific experience because this service client sees a vast difference in user behavior between desktop and mobile. Acquia Convert helps us hone in on those insights and drive the mobile experience that can be impactful, separate from the desktop experience.

Meck: What features stand out that you think clients will benefit from and can take advantage of?

Patil: One of the things that Bounteous x Accolite has identified with Acquia Convert is that the implementation is simple and straightforward, and customer support is strong. A lot of times, clients find it hard to implement a tool on a website and then we go down the rabbit hole to see what’s causing the issue.

There are many features that Acquia Convert offers, including heat mapping, surveys, confidence calculator, and more—all in one place. Typically, other tools don’t have all of these features in one place, which means you have to use various third-party vendors or go outside of the main tool to have these features. This makes Acquia Convert a more holistic, robust experience.

One of the key features we’ve used is heat mapping. In many use cases, we want to understand how the main KPI performs, and we’ve used heat mapping to understand the user scroll or their behavior on that page. The confidence calculator is also unique, enabling us to track more than one main KPI. You can track a few additional secondary KPIs and look at the confidence calculator for each of these KPIs. It not only helps you keep an eye on your primary KPI, but tells the larger story of how affected the secondary KPIs are and how confident we are in their performance. The tool is great because of its multiple features, and the team makes it flexible with pricing and package offerings - you can scale up or down depending on the need and maturity of the program.

Meck: How can companies that are just starting out or somewhere in the middle of their personalization experimentation journey get started with Acquia Convert?

Patil: From a strategy perspective, we always advocate stepping up the complexity of the program depending on the organization’s maturity. You can scale it up and down as it grows and the client gains more insights and understands the experimentation world better.

With Acquia Convert, you can start with the basic package to test simple yet impactful use cases and then move on to more advanced packages, which enable more robust features such as advanced multivariate testing, personalization, and reporting and analysis. It’s one thing to launch advanced use cases or personalization use cases, but if you’re not reporting and analyzing the data coming out of your test, you’re not doing much because that informs what you do next. In order to get more sophisticated with your program, you need to understand all of this first and mature a program over a period of time.

Meck: How can Acquia Convert translate into specific marketing goals, such as improved bounce rates, conversion rates, etc.?

Patil: Ultimately, Acquia Convert helps achieve marketing objectives by improving the user experience. We’re looking for what’s impacting conversion, which we can do this by testing different variations of an experience. We can ensure users get the most relevant experience, which not only provides a more seamless user journey, but also achieves the objectives driving revenue generation.

Some marketing use cases where Acquia Convert can make an impact to show value are areas such as user flow - where we’re testing the entire flow from end-to-end on the website, testing the e-commerce funnel, and eventually, personalization. Customer needs are ever changing, and they expect more from brands. They expect brands to know more about their preferences, making their experience unique and seamless - and Acquia Convert helps businesses do just that.

Meck: Bounteous x Accolite wants to help get people going with Acquia Convert, and have developed a number of different offerings to help get companies started, correct?

Patil: We have. Our first offering is a program audit and strategy. Many times, clients come to us and say “We have a program, can you conduct an audit and help us build a strategy along with the tool?” So we go in and audit their existing state, understand the maturity of the program, and help build a long-term strategy. This includes looking at use cases and determining how much more we can push the tool, such as what features are being used today and what features aren’t being used but should be used.

Our second offering is migrating from an existing tool to Acquia Convert. We implement Acquia Convert and help clients integrate it with analytics tools, third-party vendors, and CDPs. We also provide the technical expertise needed and ensure that it’s set up correctly in order to start activating the tool.

The third and final offering is an ongoing consultation. Once a program is audited, built, and the tool is set up correctly, we then provide month-over-month consulting to help clients activate upon their use case strategy, including the velocity of testing, how many tests and personalization activities are running, analyzing data, etc. The goal here is to mature a program and drive that value for the business.

Interested in learning more? Watch the full webinar or reach out to our team to get started.